Tabula Rasa artist biographies page 2 and Event Gallery

 Everything Lynn Petko has been creating for the past 2 years--since her retirement from a 30-year-career as a Penn State professor of creative writing, composition, short story, and theater--has been a Renaissance, a reinventing. Although drawn to painting now, she never painted before this time. During this Renaissance period of rebirth and transition, Lynn has “restarted” her acting troupe, The Nitwittany Players, with three of her best friends, Paula Johnston, Chris Omiros, and Joe Onesi. Lynn is writer, editor, director, and producer. The first run of their comedy show Cla-ass-icks I: Shakespeare, God, and Demons and Angels Between Heaven and Earth is scheduled for November 12, 2021 at Penn State Fayette. The troupe plans to perform two scenes from A Midsummer Night’s Dream, which deal with the town mechanicals; “Crypt Talk,” which involves Romeo and Juliet and Macbeth and Lady Macbeth after death; Poe’s “Tell-Tale Heart” and “Cabbages and Clocks” (adapted from “The Devil in the Belfry”); D.H.Lawrence’s “The Rocking- Horse Winner”; Hawthorne’s “The Birthmark” (in production); and John Milton’s Paradise Lost (in production). For her painting Lynn says that often she can feel “a divine pull” to her subject matter--usually seascapes and waterways--and hopes that this “other-worldliness” translates to her audience. She utilizes various media and sculpting agents to call forth the spirit that lives within to showcase this ethereal nature. Some works have complementary poetry. 

 Electric Girl
Electric Girl

don’t say much, 

you feel her 

when she’s there-- 

Electric is her hair 

of spun gold wild fire in the air.

 
Electric Girl 

don’t say much, 

you feel her when she’s near--

Electric are her thoughts 

like lightning striking every-which-a-where.

Electric Girl 

don’t eat much, 

I feed her when she’s here-- 

Electric flows my laughter 

like unmeasured liquid without care. 

Her country is not sweetness. 

Its taste I long to have-- 

a taste that I’ve not so often known. 

I’d live there for forever and be glad. 

Whenever she is here,

I live without a fear.

I feel fuller than an emperor of Rome. 

Electric Girl, she’s my home.

Whenever she’s not here, 

I walk my lands alone. 

My country then is poor, and I beg, barefoot

then asleep on cobblestones. 

Electric Girl, come back home.  

 Alexis Smith is from Uniontown PA, Her love of art and graphic design began as a young child. Her fascination and allure of Ancient Egyptian culture started her down the path of art at an early age. In her high school years she started perfecting her line work and drawing skills doing comic book illustrations. Once she progressed her line drawing skills and graduated high school she set out to become a tattoo artist. She worked in highly reputable tattoo shops in the Pittsburgh area. During her progression into tattoo artistry she learned many more valuable skills that helped transform from her skin medium to painting on canvas. Alexis didn't choose a traditional nylon canvas approach, instead opting for abstract and unconventional canvas mediums such as cardboard, wood and walls for murals. Her predominant paint medium is Acrylic paint, gold and silver leaf which she uses to rise above simple 2 dimensional flat images into 3 dimensional visceral visual constructs. Her mixed medium gives an iconography and almost religious context to the ideas being portrayed in her ancient and modern cultural interpretations. Alexis's lifelong fascination with religious theology and occultism across many different cultures of the world have fed into her art designs and aesthetics. She chooses dark and brooding images that connect on many emotional levels to the observer but also themes of light and ascension to higher plains of conciseness in the images of gods, goddesses and demi-gods portrayed in her work.  

Julie began her professional art career being hired as the art teacher at Geibel High School in Connellsville, PA where she has been teaching 7th to 12th grade for over 15 years. She instructs students to employ different techniques in 2D, 3D, and photography. Julie's favorite 3D medium is papier mache.  Looking to learn a new 3D medium to share with her students, she spent countless hours trying out new materials from an assortment of papers, cardboard, and tape, and how they react to different papier mache mixes.

She has been creating papier mache dolls for the New Renaissance show. Some have elaborate hair, antlers, helmets, and intricate hands. Her influences come from the past, ancient art of the Americas, all the way through the fashionable garments of the 1500’s, and 1600’s up to and including the roaring twenties.